Tag Archives: Interview

Flordia is known for being one of the first places to have any death metal acts. Legends like Death, Obituary, Nocturnus, Morbid Angel and even some hidden gems like D.V.C all hail from there.

Now in current times, the scene has spawned a new gem known as Sapraemia. The band is young but already impressing both the new and old generations of Floridian metalheads. But this band alone isn’t enough to satisfy bassist/vocalist Julian David Guillen’s need for extremity. To cure this hunger Guillen decided to form a grindcore band called Munchausen, where he plays guitar while his girlfriend Shyann Rodriguiez does vocals. Today, the two lock up with The Bonesaw to chat about these amazing hidden projects.

How would you describe Sapraemia’s sound?

Julian: We’re influenced by Death, Nile, Wormed and lots of really brutal shit. We listen to a lot of the new school and the old-school. I guess the best way to describe us is a fusion of Origin and old-school Suffocation. People seem to really like us. We get a mixed crowd to of tech-death kids and old-school guys who loves bands like Incantation.

What does the name mean and where did you come up with it?

Julian: It’s a blood disease that eats all of your healthy blood cells. You are pretty much rotting from the inside. It’s a pretty metal disease and I found it to be a really cool word. A lot of people mistake us for the band from New Jersey called Sapremia. Maybe one day a tour of both of us will happen.

Any plans for any new material?

Julian: We are working on new material and trying to sell it to labels and stuff. We play new stuff at shows here and there and we do plan on recording it. Hopefully we will have an album before the year is over.

I see you played in Solstice for a short while?

Julian: I played with Solstice for a couple of months last year. When I was offered to join I had no idea who they were but then realized they are legends. It was a great experience playing for a classic band. I was younger than all of them by at least 15 years but it was fun. They’re all great guys.

Can you tell us about your other project Munchausen?

Julian: I was sitting at home one day and I was coming up with grind riffs. Nothing was going on with my other band at the moment so I figured to form a small fun project. I then talked to my girlfriend Shyann and said, “Hey, we should make some grindcore or something. Maybe you can sing.” She told me she didn’t know what to do and I said, “Well, just yell.”

Shyann: Then we discovered that I sound like bullshit. I honestly thought I sounded like crap, but everyone else loved it. I don’t know why, since I’m not trying to do anything spectacular. But I get good reactions so I’ll keep doing it.

Julian: You combine Barney from Napalm Death and Mike from Eyehategod, then make it a girl voice and you’ll get Shyann.

Well if you think about it, grindcore vocals are good for grind but in general are shit vocals.

Shyann: Yes, it works out that way.

Julian: Unless you’re the dude from Insect Warfare. His vocals are just awesome.

Are you guys working on an album? Anywhere people can hear you guys?

Shyann: We do have a bandcamp where you can hear our stuff. We have two singles up on there. We might upload others. Who knows.

Julian: Shyann wanted to keep us as low-key as possible. We mostly just focus on playing shows instead of mostly putting our music out there. I find it annoying when bands over promote. I see it all the time, bands trying to force you to like their Facebook page or wear their own shirts live or even remind you they have merch between every song they play. I’m just like, “Dude, let them find out.”

Shyann: It just pisses me off whenever a friend of mine has a band and their stuff is just all over the place. It’s not just 3 or 5 friends, it’s many assholes online who just spam everywhere. “Like Us on Facebook. Check Out our bandcamp. Look, we’re in this video. Look at our Instagram.” It’s over saturation and just way too much promoting. With Munchausen we just set just set out to make music for fun and don’t care about being huge or forcing our band down peoples throat on stuff like Twitter. I think Twitter is the dumbest shit in the world.

I noticed a song called “Comparing Turds” where you bash random bands in the lyrics. How did you come up with this song?

Shyann: I used to join all these metal groups about a year ago. I think I first saw it in this group called “Unpopular Metal Opinions.” Most of the time when someone compared two bands if someone thought both sucked they would comment “comparing turds” or some variation of it. The one who used it the most was this one girl who was an obvious black metal elitist. We became friends since we both like raw black metal and hate everything. She’s very weird. Whenever we chat she always randomly says that a random band sucks. I eventually got banned from those groups and me and her made our own metal opinions group together. I randomly searched the chat and typed in the word sucks and I got many results such as “Mastodon sucks,” “King Parrot sucks” and “Aeon sucks.” I agree with these bands being bad and we decided to write this song as a tribute to her.

Julian: We aren’t bashing her in any way. We love her. It’s a tribute.

Okay, time for the last question. If you were trapped on a desert an could only bring one album which would it be and why?

Julian: Damn that’s hard. I’d have to go with Blut Aus Nord’s “777-Sect(s).” Some of the nastiest, most experimental black metal out there. I love that band. Very varied and dark. The art is amazing too.

Shyann: For me it would be Alice in Chains self titled album. Alice in Chains is my favorite band of all time. People find it weird when I say that because I’m known for listening to all this ambient black metal. They’re pretty much what got me into I guess you could say heavy music. That album in particular has gotten me through hard times. So if I was trapped on a desert island and somehow had a CD player, that would be the album I’d hope would somehow be there.

A then-unknown Steven Speilberg would direct a horror film by the name of “Jaws” that unexpectedly brought in a record number of ticket sales; thus creating the first-ever summer blockbuster. Due to its huge success, the studio decided to make a sequel simply titled “Jaws 2.” Released 38 years ago today, Jaws 2 naturally was a big success thanks to the original. Though still a well-liked film, people tend to forget how important it actually was to the film industry as Jaws 2 set the template for not only horror franchises but franchise films altogether.

This importance was not forgotten by two devoted fans named Louis R. Pisano and Michael A. Smith when they wrote a book titled “Jaws 2: The Making of the Hollywood Sequel.” Released last September by BearManor Media, the project took five years to complete and contains interviews with just about every Jaws 2 cast member one could imagine. The book also talks about the original plans for the film and how Jaws 2 is the most important sequel in cinematic history. In this exclusive interview, Pisano shares how his and Smith’s vision came to life for this book that all Jaws and movie fans alike should dive into.

The Bonesaw: What made you decide to write “Jaws 2: the Making of the Hollywood Sequel?”

Pisano: We decided to write this book because “Jaws 2” is a much maligned film that really doesn’t deserve to be. The film is clearly a competent and entertaining follow up to what was at that time the biggest film ever, “Jaws.” However, sequels were a foreign concept in film in 1977/1978. They weren’t a mainstream trend in motion pictures as they eventually became after the success of Jaws 2. Jaws 2 also left a historic mark on the motion picture industry much in the way the original did. The film’s teaser poster art featured the “All New” text which also appeared on future film sequel posters such as “Halloween II.” The film’s tagline “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…” also became famous, often closely imitated in many later films and has even become a synonym of sorts used in language when a circumstance leads you to believe something counter-intuitive.

Much in the way that the original created the summer blockbuster as a form of Hollywood business and left its mark on pop culture, Jaws 2 essentially created the notion of a film sequel as another new Hollywood business. In fact, the word “blockbuster” itself was born because of Jaws (referring to the massive ticket lines that stretched for several city blocks). Jaws 2 started the sequel as a movie business which is now almost the norm. Dozens of sequels are released every year now in cinemas as standard fare – not the case in any way back in 1978.

We felt that Jaws 2 – because it follows in the shadows of the near-perfect original, has been unfairly underappreciated for the wrong reasons. We wanted to present the fact that Jaws 2 had just as significant of an impact on the Hollywood movie business as the original.

The Bonesaw:How were you able to contact all these cast members for interviews?

Pisano: The embryonic stages of acquiring contact with all of the contributors to the book happened when I was seeking out autographs from the entire cast of Jaws 2 for my personal collection. Over the course of a couple years I eventually found all the “Amity Kids.” I reintroduced many of them to each other and from there it pretty much snowballed. They all even got together for a cast reunion in California a few years back.

My co-author Michael A. Smith had also been heavily involved in film research for years for his Mediamikes website and had many, many important connections in his network that were invaluable to the book in terms of securing interviews. Also as we were working on the book and news of its release spread on the internet, we were fortunate enough to actually have some of the contributors contact us out of the blue. We were very lucky that all of these things led to us finding every living cast or crew member to participate in the book.

Bonesaw:What was your first experience with Jaws 2? What do you like most about it?

Pisano: My first experience with Jaws 2 was seeing the Lou Feck novel cover. Having already been fascinated by Roger Kastel’s masterpiece original Jaws image of the Benchley novel, the Feck Jaws 2 image was eye candy to me. Then of course, I saw the actual film in the cinema. I remember the audience reactions and the screams. The movie scared me enough, but the screams added to that fright and from there it became a cherished memory and created my love for this underrated and gutsy film.

Lou Feck’s “Jaws 2” novel cover.

Bonesaw:Have you ever watched any of the old Jaws rip-offs? If so, which one’s your favorite?

Pisano: Funny question because my good friend John Campopiano is a huge Jaws rip-off fan! He holds an annual gathering among all of us local Jaws fans called “Rip-Off Fest,” so I’ve had the privilege of seeing many, many Jaws rip-offs over the years thanks to him.

However, my favorite one has to be the infamous “Great White” (also called “The Last Shark”). The reason? When I saw the ads on T.V. as a kid, I thought, “it might be Jaws 3!” So for the nostalgia of that film and the fact that it did very closely resemble Jaws – even outright robbing actual scenes from Jaws and Jaws 2! For all it’s awful glory, Great White is my favorite Jaws rip-off film.

You can purchase “Jaws 2: The Making of the Hollywood Sequel” from Amazon, BearManor Media and where other books are sold.

Underground freestyle rapper Bruce “AllOne” Pandolfo returns to talk about his new album “I’ve Been Thinking” (available on May 3rd via Dope Sandwich Records and www.allonevoice.bandcamp.com) as well as winning the 2016 NPR Tiny Desk contest and more in part one of this multi-faceted podcast.

Chelsea Wolfe, a California singer/songwriter, is one of the most eclectic artists on today’s scene. With her lo-fi sound self described as “doom-folk”, Wolfe has gained an underground following among metalheads, art kids, and goths alike while touring with major acts such as Queens of the Stone Age. She’s probably one of the youngest musicians to say that Mark Lanegan covered her!

Meanwhile, in the realm of television, major networks have taken notice of her cinematic potential: last year, her song “Feral Love” was featured in trailers for the hit HBO show Game of Thrones, while more recently Wolfe has been gaining even more exposure via ads for AMC’s Fear The Walking Dead.

Chelsea’s making critical waves with her ethereal new opus, “Abyss”, and I recently had the chance to interview her via email. We discussed her new album, rising fame, and other topics relating to her work.

On the heavier direction of Abyss: We’ve been touring a lot for the past few years so for the first time I kept the live show in mind while writing an album. I knew I wanted to have some heavy songs that would translate well live and be fun to play. I played Roadburn, I love that festival. I think our audience is really varied, actually.

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On the themes of sleep paralysis permeating Abyss: It’s just something I’ve had for years so it started creeping into my music, into my daily mindset. I’ve had sleep and dream issues since I was a kid, but as an adult I started getting this version of sleep paralysis where I wake up, and my body wakes up, but I can still see the figures from my dreams in the room, like shadows moving towards me. At times I’ve lashed out or tried to fight them off. While I was writing this album I started talking about my experiences of sleep paralysis with other people, and got some books on sleep, and it all just kind of happened naturally. Not every song is specifically about sleep or dreams, but every song has a nod to it, at least.

On visualizing Abyss‘s music: I think it would be really stylized with deep colors, lots of blue. It would be like the painted world in What Dreams May Come.

Like this:

Canadian Industrial Metal duo The Unravelling have had quite the journey. In 2010, they released their critically acclaimed debut 13 Arcane Hymns. At what seemed like the breakthrough they had so deserved, singer Steve Moore was diagnosed with cancer, putting the band on an indefinite hiatus. During this time, instrumentalist Gustavo de Beauville became heavily involved with soundtrack work and studio production (even more extensively than he already was). Through Moore’s positive mentality, he beat cancer and rejuvenated The Unravelling as quickly as he could. The band has recently released the “Revolt” single and has begun work on their long awaited follow up to 13 Arcane Hymns. Moore and Beauville caught up with Metal Insider to talk about their struggles, salvation and their future.

The overall sound has changed drastically from 13 Arcane Hymns to “Revolt.” Why did you guys decide to take The Unravelling in that direction?

Steve Moore: Well, the sound is always evolving, and the songs themselves will be quite different from each other too. “Revolt” is one piece of the new album’s puzzle. That being said, it has changed a lot since 13 Arcane Hymns. I know that Gustavo has his own reasons for the shift (soundtrack work, more production training, etc.), but I personally think it goes a bit like this. We want to do
something visceral and direct; more moody and atmospheric than overly technically focused. That requires a sense of space in the music where most bands would tend to fill it up. On the last album we were going for a full band sound. This time we’re not. A song can sound as cinematic as we want it to…we don’t really have the trappings of trying to fit into something. The lyrics have changed significantly, and this is partially because of my own ideas and concepts changing, or falling away, over the past 5 years. There’s much less personal struggle elements. The concept of the album is more of a “destroy the self-image” than building it up in any way, and that’s affected all aspects of what I do. We just know the way we like to explore sound and are honoring that – satisfying the inner teen in us who used to wait impatiently for Columbia House to arrive! The test is always if we feel it on a deep level.

Gustavo de Beauville: After trying the traditional metal band approach and realizing how cantankerous and unprofessional the scene was I switched gears. Reality kicked in hard and made me refocus on composing music for film and video games. I started teaching myself how to incorporate orchestral instruments into songs and discovered hybrid orchestral – where composers fused classical with electronic elements. Artists that really stood out for me during this time were Two Steps from Hell (Thomas Bergersen and Nick Phoenix), Troels Folmann, Clint Mansell, Hans Zimmer and John Murphy. These are guys that were actually earning a living with music. Trent Reznor also provided a lot of inspiration. Hence the radical shift away from drums, bass, guitars and vox to “whatever I need to craft the track”. Guitar is the instrument that I grew up playing but now I feel equally as ease using synthesizers, arpeggiators, preprogrammed beats or even a hang drum to make music.